


Life As We Know It

by morelikeassassin



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Ending, M/M, POV Second Person, because let's face it this train isn't ending anywhere near here, time skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 05:56:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20719223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morelikeassassin/pseuds/morelikeassassin
Summary: Deep in the heart of a dangerous city called London, there are two old men who can help with the terrible problem you have. They will help you, provided that you never visit them again. It's only polite, after all.





	Life As We Know It

There is a place, you’ve heard, that people go to for help. It is the only place like it that you’ve heard of in this world. There are countless ways to find advice, information, knowledge, and secrets, but never help. The person who tells you this also tells you that you it’s not a place people should go. That when they do, they are very rarely heard from again. The things that live there are old and dangerous, though perhaps not as much of either as some others you’ve encountered. Most importantly, they are cunning. It’s what makes them dangerous, and what has allowed them to become old. The person who tells you this, who is not your friend, looks you up and down and admits that you might be fine. You, personally and specifically. Sometimes they take a liking to people like you.

You are reminded to be polite. The person who is not your friend suggests that you bring a gift. Music used to be a popular choice, little 45 records and cassette tapes, but it’s hard to know what they don’t have, anymore. If you can bake something, you should do so. If you can’t, then it’s rumored that one of them likes gin. Or was it sherry? You point out that there’s a substantial difference between the two. Your not-friend argues that you could say as much about the people they’re for.

You are not given an address. Instead, you are told which pub to go to, and whom to ask for directions when you get there.

“First time?” she asks. She looks too young for the knowing in her voice, the sympathy she has for you. She can’t know why you’re there. She must, however, know why people go looking for this place. Something in her smirk is unexpectedly sharp, not just with knowing, but with a secret.

It is your first time, so you tell her that. She nods, and pats you on the shoulder.

“Good. Don’t come back.” It’s not a rejection. Not a threat, or even a warning. It is a command, as matter-of-fact as if she were telling you which beer to order from the shabby chalkboard behind her.

The walk is longer than you expected, up steep cobbled roads and down alleyways you’re not sure were there the first time you looked. You are certain that you’ve gone in at least one circle, but nothing looks familiar. As you reach the last couple directions, you realize very abruptly that you are no longer being watched. You can’t remember the last time you felt that way. You can remember the first time, though. It feels like the first time you stayed awake past midnight, the first time you heard that very particular quiet that comes from a place where everyone except you is asleep. It is lonely. It is free.

It’s not midnight when you arrive at the small red-brick house. It is barely past noon. The front yard is also small, and painfully English, overflowing with flowers that you can smell before you step inside. Trestled archways lead back around the house, both so heavily weighed down by roses that they almost look unsafe to walk under. You ignore them. You were told not to wander. A single weathered loveseat is nestled amid an enormous bushel of lavender. There is no other garden furniture. Whatever lives here, you don’t suppose it entertains often.

You pause at the front door for a moment, your mind catching on something that looks out of place. Did the house have this many windows when you opened the front gate? Surely the door wasn’t this color before you took your eyes off it to look at the roses. You only looked away for a second. Something is unmistakably different. You remember, then, that you were told not to wander and not to linger too long without introducing yourself.

So you knock.

The man who opens the door was probably tall, once. His slouch looks intentional, like a petulant teenager. It contrasts with his shock of gray hair, almost white, kept long but not unkempt just around his jawline. He is wearing a green cable-knit sweater that doesn’t fit right and a pair of circular sunglasses, the kind with shields along the sides. They don’t go together even remotely well. The sweater has pulled back from his arm where he is holding the door open, and you can see a large, mottled scar around his hand.

“Alright then, who are you?” he demands.

You give him your name, and as brief an explanation as you can muster. You were told to answer any question you are asked. Hiding things will make it harder for them to help you. The man doesn’t seem to recognize anything he dislikes in you, so he gestures for you to follow him inside.

“You don’t need the lights, do you?” he asks. The inside of the house is in fact completely unlit, though it’s hardly pitch black with the sun streaming in across hardwood floors and thick, bright carpets. You suppose that you don’t, and you tell him as much. It occurs to you that most people don’t wear sunglasses inside. The thought sticks in your head until you notice a pair of white canes propped up next to a coat rack. A clock somewhere in the house strikes 12:15.

You are led to a dining room that is warm with sunlight and opens directly up into the kitchen. There is no music, but the sounds of birds and fountains and very distant cars drift through the open French doors, along with the smell of more flowers in the backyard. The room sounds alive. A second man is bustling around the kitchen, rifling through teabags as he waits impatiently for a kettle to finish heating. He is larger than the other one, though that’s not difficult, considering how thin the other one is. His sunglasses are clunky, unfashionable wraparounds that suit the soft curve of his face. He’s well put-together in a neat collared shirt and v-neck sweater. He is not young, but his curly blonde hair doesn’t yet have a touch of gray in it, and he has the kind of features that always stay a decade or so behind his actual age

“You’re here early,” he comments, with something that might be approval. “Go ahead and sit down, we’ll get started in a second.”

You are already sitting before you can think to respond. There is a low, polite noise at your elbow, and you look over to see very toothy dog smiling at you. You waste a few seconds trying to figure out what kind of dog, exactly, he is. The closest you get is some kind of bull terrier crossed with about five other things, one of which might have been a sofa. The combination is hideous and adorable. He is sitting just close enough that you could reach out to touch him. A tag on his collar reads _HELLO MY NAME IS MACGUFFIN_, with what you assume to be the same text spelled out in braille underneath.

“Don’t be a pest,” says the man in the green sweater to the dog. Macguffin looks briefly over his shoulder at him and lies down, still staring at you. “He thinks you have food.”

You remember that you do, and you bring out the tupperware container of cookies you made that morning. You explain that you usually put walnuts in, but you weren’t sure if they’d be allergic. They’re not, although the thinner man doesn’t much like them in cookies.

“Well, that’s very thoughtful,” says the man with the wraparound sunglasses. “You’d be surprised how many people bring store-bought stuff, really sort of defeats the purpose.”

“Or gin,” says the man in the green sweater, clearly confused. “I still haven’t figured out how that got started.”

The first man laughs. “I blame Melanie,” he says, “Of course she’s going to tell people to bring us gin if you keep giving it to her.”

The kettle is finished, so he sits down at the table across from you with three cups of tea. The other one, hearing him do so, sits as well.

You are asked to tell your story. You’ve met things that ask questions and pull answers like wings from a trapped insect, and these are not those things. This might be easier if they were. Your answer is slow, halting, and deliberate, tripping over itself and smattered with half-remembered details. The man in the green sweater is clearly impatient, but also silent, reaching for another cookie every time it looks like he wants to say something. After the third or fourth one, the other man quietly puts a hand over his and keeps it there. This seems to have the same effect as the cookies.

You tell them about something that looks back at you out of mirrors, something that has your face and is not you. It was friendly, at first. Saying that out loud sounds like an excuse, but it is true, so it is what you tell them. It was helpful, and when it asked you to do things for it, you wanted to help it back. You knew it was dangerous. That’s what you liked about it. But something happened. No, you did something, something so dark and frightening that you consider lying about it. You take a breath to consider this, and as you do so, you notice another scar on the thinner man’s neck. It is long, wide, and pockmarked, like whatever made it was blunt and jagged. The longer you look, the more scars you see, little crescents up over his jawline. He’s wearing long sleeves. Both of them are. You look at the other man, his head tilted very slightly at attention. You wonder what scars he has, or, if he doesn’t, what he had to do to avoid getting them.

You tell the nice old men about the awful thing you did. It is quiet as you wait for a reaction that does not come. The sound of the world outside continues.

The man with the wraparound sunglasses asks gently what you want to do about it. You want it to stop, to be over. He taps thoughtfully on the other man’s hand, still resting under his own.

“How badly do you want it?” he asks. “You have other options, y’know. What do you think, for the Stranger?”

This is apparently addressed to the other man, who doesn’t sound pleased about the answer he has. “This case? Flesh, maybe.”

“Mmm,” the first man agrees. “Where is Jared, these days?”

“Long gone,” says the second man. “Said he moved to Berlin, I think. Last time I tried to contact him, he said to talk to Marie.”

“Oh, I liked Marie,” the first man says pleasantly. “She fixed up Macguffin after that car accident. Didn’t she boy, didn’t she make you all good as new?”

The dog hastens over to be petted, and the second man makes a derisive noise. “After some negotiating to get the right number of limbs on him, yes.”

Seeing Macguffin move, you’re less sure that his indecipherable mixture of traits is something he was born with. He seems happy enough, either way. As nice as Marie sounds, you explain that that life is not for you. You don’t want to hide behind a different power. You want out. Completely.

More than anything you’ve said so far, this seems to throw them. They don’t exchange a nervous look, of course, but the man in the green sweater tightens his grip on the hand he is holding.

“Are you sure about this?” asks the man in the wraparound sunglasses. “These things have consequences. If it got round to the wrong people that we were passing this stuff out, it might get messy pretty quickly, and not just for us.”

You’re sure. Why wouldn’t you go through with it, anyway?

“It’s… Not pleasant,” says the man in the green sweater. “None of them are, but the Stranger’s is especially harsh.”

You want to know. You need to know. You can’t hurt anybody again, not like you did.

This answer seems to satisfy them. The noise from outside has gone away. You don’t know how long it’s been gone for, or if it will ever come back. The world pauses for these nice old men to tell you how to end your life as you know it. It is a simple thing, which only makes it more frightening. No time for doubts or second thoughts. It is a painful thing, and it would hurt until the end of your natural life if you were to do it. It is a terrible thing. It is not as terrible as what you have done.

You ask them if it’s worth it.

They smile. Each one has a different smile for an answer. The man in the green sweater has given this smile so often that it is etched into his face in creases and lines that you only now match to their source. His smile is tired and persistent, and the way his jaw moves around it, you can almost hear the words upon words that he has decided would not compare with how it makes him feel. His head turns slightly towards where he is holding someone’s hand, as if that might help him picture what it looks like. The man with the wraparound sunglasses is grinning so wide that it almost looks painful. He is getting away with something that he shouldn’t have done, and he is smug and triumphant and full of joy. It’s a private thing, surely meant only for himself, and it strikes you that it might as well be, since the only person that matters cannot see it.

“That’s up to you, isn’t it?” they tell you.


End file.
